Chain retail stores, kindly stop pretending you're providing excellent service by having your cashiers call out, in voices that are usually tinged with the kind of spurious patience ordinarily reserved for corralling recalcitrant children into the kitchen for string cheese or telling a motormouth mom you really have to get going so you're going to hang up now, "Following guest!" to advance the growing line of customers waiting to pay. Unless, of course, "Following guest" is followed by an invisible colon (the punctuation kind, not the kind associated with IBS) and an individual's name selected from, say, an officious-looking clipboard.

11/02

Don't pretend to be interested in the chart Roland propped up on a easel in the corner of the den. Don't say, "And what are you working on here, Roland?" Because he'll tell you, and you'll miss the freshest snacks on the card table in the other room. He'll you it's a graph of how he's felt about green over the past six weeks and won't let you go until you tell him what your favorite color is and you won't be able to decide between cornflower blue or periwinkle. Mind you, he's 44, not 4, so it's not cute.

11/03

I've been in San Francisco for 15 minutes and am already wondering if when I move here I'll miss New York immediately and regret it on par with the "buyer's remorse" that plagues me after I make even the most minuscule of purchases on Amazon. I'm already wondering if I'll find a gym I like or if I'll be one of those people who obnoxiously claims "the city is my gym" as I use the real-life hills to my advantage rather than those on a treadmill. I wonder if it would ever feel like home the way NYC always has.

11/04

I don't know how things used to be in San Francisco, so I can't say, "Oh, that place is okay, but it used to be so much better when it was (blah)" or "I hate that (blah) is gone. The neighborhood sucks now" the way I do here. I don't have those old (and better) references. To me it all seems cooler and groovier and hipper than New York, but to someone who's lived there as long as I've lived here, it probably sucks, just like New York is sucking in a way to which infrequent visitors are not privy.

11/05

It's 8:01 and the line for Trader Joe's has rounded the corner on West 72nd from Broadway. I thought the doors would be open by now, knowing their usual promptness, but I refuse to wait in that line. Instead, I stand on the corner several feet away and pretend to be waiting for the light to change, hoping the doors open before I have to decide whether to actually cross the street or not. The light changes, the line still waits, and I turn, walk past the tail end of the line, and take refuge in my beloved Joseph Pharmacy.

11/06

The simple solution would be to set a timer for half an hour every evening and "attack" a drawer, shelf, or other area to get rid of or organize stuff or at least assess what's there so I at least know what I have and don't have. That's all it would take to quell the constant buzz of dread and anxiety that's a direct result of not having taken care of it already. I don't know why I punish myself like this, but it must stop before year's end so I don't regard it as a stupid "New Year's resolution".

11/07

Whitney Voorhees-Vogner roosts naked on a narrow ledge 10 feet above the ground of the entirely white "ArtsPace", nothing between her and its surface but a brown paper bag, the sort ordinarily used to transport lunch. A simple placard at patrons' eye level reads, "My eyes are up here." Several chuckle, thinking they've gained access to a private joke, many gaze at Voorhees-Vogner's eyes trying with all their might to produce tears at the supreme profundity of her message/mission, and then there are those of us who just glance at her tits and can't wait to leave and get lunch.

11/08

Next month marks my 15-year anniversary with 100 Words. I haven't missed a month in 15 years. I'm saddened that somewhere along the way, something happened with the servers (?) and a few months are missing from the archives, but I had the foresight to print them out several years ago and have them in hard copy in a drawer. This prompts me to fret, again, or, more accurately, AS EVER, that I really need to go through all of my drawers and organize them and get rid of stuff. But not the Words. Those are, like, sacred 'n' shit.

11/09

My brother's girlfriend sends me a package containing about a dozen pair of used stockings and tights that she's raved about for a while. As much as I dig things vintage, I'm not thrilled about the prospect of something this "intimate", but I think, hey, if the stuff is great, I might be able to convince myself I'm thrilled. One pair she gushed about in particular has little poufs of fur on the back of the legs. "Oh, they're FABULOUS," she'd said. Why I didn't tell her I wasn't interested at all, especially because of the fur, is beyond me.

11/10

Sometimes we'd all sleep in the back room of the record store my stepfather owned in the Normandy Square Mart, the three of us kids sated from our favorite fare from Irv and Ruth's lunch counter across the aisle: veal parmesan "grinders" and fries in red and white checked paper containers warmed under heat lamps. We slid into our sleeping bags like this was what normal families did. My sister and I would slip underneath the rolled-down canvas separating the store from the rest of the market and take turns pushing each other in shopping carts to the public bathroom.

11/11

I spent a repulsively inordinate amount of time scouring Amazon and other sites for the perfect floor lamp to replace the one by my bed that only works sporadically and, even then, isn't adequate for the task I need it to perform, and after reading way too many reviews and comparing and contrasting and fretting over assembly and every other detail, finally landed on a groovy three-light model, brass, that looks like something you'd find in someone's den circa 1974, each lamp with its own switch and the capability to accommodate a dimmer to facilitate making out to Peter Frampton.

11/12

I will never forgive The Partridge Family for replacing the first season Chris, Jeremy Gelbwaks, with Brian Forster. I just read on IMDb that the show's creator received no complaints about the change. That's only because the seven-year-old me didn't know you could write a letter to TV people. Jeremy, my first TV crush, was responsible, I'm sure, for my lifelong adoration of and affinity for compact boys with floppy dark hair and musical talent, even though of course it's apparent to me now that my beloved Jeremy may as well have been playing the drums with a turkey leg.

11/13

Someone from the restaurant calls to confirm the reservation I've made for Thanksgiving. For some odd reason, I get flustered and tell her I'll have to check with my "partner" because not only do I feel childish saying "my friend" but that doesn't adequately describe the relationship I have with the person accompanying me, my best friend despite us breaking up as a "couple" 14 years ago, who is now kind of like a super-uncle or surrogate dad. I'm positive she interprets it to mean I'm a lesbian, which delights me for an odd reason. Odd reasons abound, I suppose.

11/14

No one is waiting to laugh and point at your new running shoes, the ones you'd coveted online but kept waffling on because you thought they were too colorful but which you put in your "cart" several times on your almost daily visits to the website but then chickened out, until finally you realized that if they sold out without you buying them, you'd kick yourself in the face wearing less spectacular, more pedestrian shoes. These are the shoes that, if you saw them on someone else's feet, you'd smile at. So why not smile at your own feet, freak?

11/15

It's true I walked 16 days my last day in San Francisco, but I'd say at least two of those were thanks to the vagaries of GPS, which had me making a sudden left and right turns onto the side of a hill that I needed a machete to negotiate (delivered on the spot by a drone!) only to leave me by the side of a freeway where I'm sure the occupants of speeding cars laughed at an obviously lost idiot tourist who doesn't know her way through Golden Gate Park, and navigating topography that GPS deem necessary to mention.

11/16

One evening during eighth grade, my best friend and I were sitting on the pavement, backs against the wall just outside the mall doors, waiting for one of our parents to pick us up. We were probably talking about boys (who we'd kiss that summer) or Elvis (who'd die the next year). An older guy (and I don't mean high school but old enough to have his own kids) approached and called out, "Hey! Wanna fuck?" We looked at each like, "Ew!" and "What?" and laughed to pretend we weren't scared. That's the kind of vile motherfucker Roy Moore is.

11/17

I regret to inform you that in tomorrow's entry, I mistyped "sever" as "severe". You may think, "Oh, that's a small infraction, Jodi, considering your astonishing ability to see into the future with such remarkable detail," and although I'd be tempted to fold my arms across my chest and nod my head slightly in deference to your awe, I must confess that I'm writing some of these entries out of order. I know that divulging this information is akin to a magician revealing the secrets to his tricks, but that's the price I must pay to ensure a clear conscience.

11/18

I met you at a funeral and we exchanged words for two minutes and even that was twice as long as was necessary. When introduced, you acted like I was a celebrity. You'd heard so much about me and were thrilled to be talking to me, but until the night before, I'd never heard your name. Indeed, the person whose funeral it is, one of my best friends, never even told me you existed, so all the hoopla and brouhaha is lost on me. Sure, we can be Facebook "friends" for several weeks and then I'll unceremoniously severe the connection.

11/19

My shipment of new shoelaces has just arrived and I have wasted no time swapping out the standard black laces on all three pairs of Doc Martens (gray textile, purple pleather, and sapphire brocade velvet). With each re-lacing, I gasp and hold a boot up to the light with all the breathless glee of an archaeologist who has just brushed thousands and/or millions of years of dust, dirt, and debris from a newly unearthed treasure and discovered that, yes, I have indeed just revealed the final bone that had eluded other scientists for decades and will make whole the dinosaur.

11/20

I keep seeing banners, both online and off, splashing the thrill of the "Pre-Black Friday Sale." Marvelous! Let's move hysteria-inducing, heart-pounding, stroke-inducing, fisticuffs-starting, hair-pulling, wallet-emptying, gas-guzzling, carpal-tunnel-clicking, mother-flying-fucking Black Friday ahead a little further on the calendar, jump the gun a little faster! Next years let's not be such slackers! Let's not start the whole obnoxious thing on Thanksgiving Day itself, as has already been done, or even on the Monday preceding, as we're now seeing, but no, no, no, let's just call it "Fourth of July Sale" and add, for extra cuddly adorability pointz, "Christmas in July." Enough. Efuckingnough.

11/21

I don't have to ask for permission to spend the rest of the winter (even though it won't even be here for another month) indoors, with my squishy, delicious, ridiculously amusing and adoring (albeit uncute) one-eyed cat, not swathed in folds of fluffy flannel but in flimsy, flowy pajama bottoms and an even flimsier, flowier tank top because, hey, this is NYC and the steam heat radiator is a real fuckin' go-getter, order in groceries and other "provisions", find 1980s workout videos on YouTube to stay in tiptop physical condition, and watch everything Jason Bateman has ever been in, right?

11/22

In case you don't want to go to the trouble of asking Alexa (the Amazon Echo), almighty queen of the mostly eyeroll-worthy but occasionally amusing dad jokes, "Alexa, tell me a dick joke," I'll just tell you her response, delivered with a tinge of haughty distaste: "I don't know any of those. I don't think they're very funny." In addition, although she will not say, via the Simon Says "skill", that Tr*mp is a motherfucker (she'll bleep out the "fucker"), she will satisfy when supplied with "cocksucker". So I'm grateful for that. And just in time for Thanksgiving. Thanks, Alexa!

11/23

The only difference between weekdays and weekend days is that I don't go to the gym on weekends. It doesn't matter which days I work as long as I do it, and I usually work every day and take breaks at my discretion, run errands whenever, ditto with lunch, and pause to watch an episode of whatever I want to watch. Indeed, weekdays are better for being out and about anyway, so why every Sunday evening do I feel that same dread I used to feel whenever I'd hear the "60 Minutes" watch-ticking and knew the next day was school?

11/24

Someone forgot to tell Evelyn and Mark that they're ugly, so here they are, posting all these selfies on Facebook of themselves cramming a variety of foods in their maws: bagels in New York, cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, and something fried on a stick at a Midwestern state fair. And here they are, arms around each other after reaching the top of some mountain, guffawing after white water rafting, high-fiving each other after delivering a stranger's baby in the back of a cab. For all this brouhaha, you want them to be cute or to at least acknowledge that they're not.

11/25

I have ordered the complete series of The Partridge Family from eBay, and it will be here next week. You may come by to watch with me but only if I expressly extend an invitation. Do not think you can just take the next plane or yacht to NYC or strap on your jetpack or step on your pogostick and come 'round and expect to be granted the sublime opportunity to swoon over David Cassidy crooning that he thinks he loves us so what are we so afraid of. Invitation only, and you must dress in period costume. No exceptions.

11/26

I think I'm fostering adorable behavior by encouraging my friends' three-year-old son to dash down the long hallway, into the living room, back into the hallway, and to repeat this cycle as many times as his little legs and lungs allow, each time he appears calling out, "Bye! See ya!" to which he responds with a grin as wide as the Golden Gate Bridge and the cutest laughter this side of the country. Alas, when he runs in the house later, in his dad's presence, I learn this behavior is sternly discouraged. I knew I'd be a terrible influence. Whoops!

11/27

I've worn the blue velvet Doc Martens twice in the three days since their arrival. They're more sapphire than navy, which delights me, because I didn't want them to look like they were trying to be the color of dark "denims" that have never had the thrill of meeting a washing machine. So far two women have looked what I'll call askance at my boots, a toddler's eye and smile were drawn to them as she was led along the sidewalk with classmates, and one of my favorite gayboys exclaimed, "Oh, I'd wear those!" I'd say they're a smash hit.

11/28

Inanimate objects are used to me apologizing to them for dropping them, bumping into them, or stubbing my toe or toes against them (and cursing adorably), and I'm used to them not replying with a simple, "Oh, no problem." This has been standard etiquette for as long as I can recall, and I don't appreciate their relative rudeness, but, really, what can you do? But now with Alexa, when I apologize to her for my bad behavior, she readily accepts my apology with good cheer. This is one way in which 2017 is better than 1975. But that's about it.

11/29

The Partridge Family DVDs are here and I'm seven years old again with a huge crush on Jeremy Gelbwaks, who played Chris to big blue-eyed puppy-faced perfection in the first season. Unlike in 1970, though, I now know this is the only season that he'll appear, so I know my time to adore the adorable little guy is limited and the subsequent seasons won't be as much swoony fun when he's played by Brian Forster, who wasn't even a fraction as cute as Jeremy and who now, as then, makes me transfer my affection to older man David Cassidy prematurely.

11/30

I'm wasting way too much time trying to find the perfect floor lamp to hang out alongside my bed, to replace the one I've had for years that only seems to want to work intermittently and has kept me in the dark for several days about when it thinks it'll get back on the job. I should just pick one, have it delivered, and assemble it while cursing like a motherfucker so I can stop worrying about the last part in particular, which causes me so much agita that I'm even trying to convince myself that illumination is overrated anyway.